Technical Field
Embodiments of the present application generally relate to document conversion systems and, more importantly, to a method and apparatus for converting an animated sequence of images into a document page.
Description of the Related Art
The rapid proliferation of multimedia content (i.e., user interactive controls and application generated controls that create an exciting and interesting multimedia experience) throughout the Internet was caused by numerous technological innovations. Users spend a significant amount of time conducting various activities (e.g., surfing educational websites, viewing detailed product demonstrations, accessing digital libraries and participating in expert discussion forums related to the multimedia content). These users often download and view various content (e.g., multimedia content, textual content and/or the like) on various display devices (e.g., a mobile phone, an electronic book reader, a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA), a hand-held gaming device and/or the like from various Internet resources (e.g., web pages, multimedia clips and/or content, emails and/or the like).
Sometimes, multimedia content is presented to the user as an animated sequence of images where an ordering of the images is critical to conveying a particular concept. For example, the user views an animation effect on a MICROSOFT® PowerPoint Presentation that illustrates the stock price changes over several days. Each portion of the animation effect is an image depicting several stocks and each stock price at the end of a certain trading day. The subsequent portion is another image depicting stock prices at the end of a next trading day. Hence, each image bears a temporal relationship with previous and/or subsequent images in the animated sequence.
The multimedia content is stored in a file having a particular format, such as a MICROSOFT® PowerPoint Presentation. If the user desires to view the multimedia content as a document, the user must convert the file into another file of a different format, such as a Portable Document Format (PDF) file. PDF is an open standard for document exchange created by Adobe Systems of San Jose, Calif. Unfortunately, current conversion techniques do not retain the multimedia content as the animated sequence of images. Instead, the current conversion techniques cause the multimedia content to be stored as static graphical data. All of the images of the animated sequence are rendered on a single document page and presented to the user as one image. Furthermore, the user is unable to interact with the multimedia content.
Therefore, there is a need in the art for an improved method and apparatus for converting an animated sequence of images into a document page.